If there’s plenty of beer, everyone’s having fun and having a great time. One day, a lorry carrying alcohol overturned in the street. It might seem like a party started immediately. But, in fact, it wasn’t. In London in 1814 both happened in the street. But there was no celebration.

There was a brewery in London in the north of the city. It was located in a slum. This was where those who had come to England from Ireland lived. In this suburb, the brewery was one attraction. Although today it is the area that has become the centre of London. But that is now. Things were different in the old days.

The brewery started producing alcohol on an industrial scale in 1810. At the same time, a huge tank was erected for fermenting beer. The barrel was 22 foot high and 6,5 foot metres in diameter. The barrel had a capacity of approximately 610000 litres of beer.

Location of the beer flood

The tragedy took place on October 17, 1814. A brewery employee noticed that one of the barrel hoops was broken. He did not pay much attention to what had happened. He simply wrote a note to the repairmen to fix the barrel in the morning. It was not the first time that the hoops on this barrel had burst. Everything was repaired quickly. No incidents had occurred. That was why Joe was calm and went to drink beer at a tavern nearby. An hour later there was a big bang, followed by two quieter pops. A million and a half litres of 10-month-old porter poured out. The brewery building collapsed like a house of cards. A veritable beer tsunami erupted. The wave was four 13 foot high.

In those days there were no rich houses in the streets. There were only poor shacks, houses for prostitutes and migrants. They were made of sticks and shit. The gigantic flow of beer simply washed away all these rickety structures. The flow was so strong that it rammed a 15-year-old girl into the wall. She couldn’t handle the flood of beer and drowned in it. This was the first victim.

Consequences

A total of eight people died, according to the official version. Six Irishmen were living in basements. They shared the girl’s sad fate. They simply couldn’t get out and drowned in the beer. Another man drank so much beer that he simply could not cope with the dose of alcohol that was in his system.

After the huge wave of beer, the area looked like an area that had been hit by a massive earthquake. Dirt, ruins, buildings without facades or walls. Legends also appeared. It was said that the Irish decided to capitalise on the situation. They put on shows showing their relatives to onlookers. During one such performance, the floor collapsed. Three more people fell into a beer-flooded cellar and drowned. But no such incident actually took place.

Today there is a pub in the vicinity of these events. It has been hosting a festival for the past seven years. It brews flood porter. The beer just pours out in a huge river on this day. Everyone wants to drown in alcohol.